FIREARM-RELATED INJURY SURVEILLANCE - AN OVERVIEW OF PROGRESS AND THECHALLENGES AHEAD

Firearm-related injuries pose a serious public health problem in the U nited States and are increasingly the focus of public health concern. Despite the magnitude of this problem, ongoing and systematic collecti on of data on firearm-related injuries to help guide research and poli cy development has been lacking. The further development of firearm-re lated injury surveillance systems can provide an objective source of i nformation for policy. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Centers for Dis ease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention an d Control began to support the development of firearm-related injury s urveillance systems by augmenting existing national- and state-level d ata collection systems and establishing cooperative agreements with st ate and local health departments to identify optimal firearm-related i njury surveillance practices. Some progress has been made in improving the capacity to undertake firearm injury surveillance at national, st ate, and local levels for mortality, morbidity (including disability), and risk/protective factors, but. much work remains to be done. The d evelopment of state and local firearm-related injury surveillance syst ems provides the dearest potential for linking basic information on fi rearm-related injuries to action, given the critical role that states have in both public health surveillance and regulation of firearms. Br oader application of external cause-of-injury codes, increased standar dization and validation of definitions and data-collection instruments , improved methods for identifying firearm characteristics and types, and the identification of efficient techniques for linking health and criminal justice data sources are among the key challenges we face as we try to build a more uniform system for monitoring firearm-related i njuries in the United States.